For cryptid enthusiasts with a taste for pterosaurs, news is good, with news about sighting reports in New Jersey and Cuba, and a news release that suggests the old Dracula legends may have come from Europeans observing a living pterosaur standing on the ground at night. Perhaps vampires were not completely nonfictional after all. That press release seems to have been timed for the Halloween holiday.

While talking with Patty on the phone yesterday, I was impressed with what she told me about what the Gitmo Pterosaur might eat: She remembered how many large rats were in the coconut trees at Gitmo, when she and her family were there. She now believes that the creature may use its long beak to get into the foliage and snatch rats for snacks. Yummy! . . .

“In the summer of 2009, I saw . . . in the pinelands of New Jersey . . . a giant bat-like bird, dark brown without feathers, something prehistoric . . . a long thin head, a long tail, [and a] kind of leathery dark brown skin. The body seemed to be the size of a good-sized man; the wind span, maybe 12-15 feet across.”

“Hoaxes are disproved,” declares Jonathan Whitcomb . . . After compiling data from reports collected from early-2004 to mid-2009, from eyewitnesses across the United States, he found three kinds of evidence disproving any hoax- explanation.

. . . the mystery lights of Marfa, Texas, have entertained residents with their strange dancing. On some warmer nights, a ball of light [splits] into two, [then separates, flying] away from each other before turning around and flying back together.

“The longer we watched, the more spooked we became. It was as though a giant vampire bat (like Dracula-style) was there, but neither of us thought it really looked like a bat, either, even a big one.” . . .

According to most paleontologists, all pterosaurs, often called “pterodactyls” by Americans, became extinct millions of years ago. But Whitcomb disputes the idea that all species became extinct, citing recent eyewitness reports from Africa, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and North America.

Live Pterosaurs in America

The third edition of this non-fiction cryptozoogy book was published in November of 2011. This is the expanded version with more eyewitness sightings of live pterosaurs in the United States, including the Carson sighting in Cuba.